Smother
by Soulreciever
Summary: He's breathing through his mouth right now, each inhale an act he has to think about rather than let happen and it's disconcerting to say the least.  Hunting/Capture prequel   Series prequel   slash, au, oc, angst


Smother.

T: Because, apparently, this particular verse is not done with me yet! Prequel to Hunting and, thus by extension, Capture which I'd seriously recommend reading first, pre 'Study' by aprox 16 yrs, slash, technical AU and finally one well rounded OC in the form of Guthrie. Oh and spoilers for the plot of 'DYING' as well as a nod to 'MILVERTON'.

I own only the plot (and the aforementioned OC) everything else is the property of Sir Arthur/the BBC/ Mr Moffett/ Mr Gatiss.

O

He's breathing through his mouth right now, each inhale an act he has to think about rather than let happen and it's disconcerting to say the least. Still anything is better than the risk of reflexively breathing through his nose and thus catching the scent on the air.

Because while he's blocking out the clawing scent of the antiseptic it's pretty easy to pretend that he's stood at the entrance to a bedroom in one of the fancy town houses they've been circulating recently...to pretend he's stood in the doorway because Mycroft has caved into the urge for a nap and he's been sent to fetch him back again...

Oh god, how had they gotten here again?

He runs his hands through his hair and once again checks his mobile...oh he knows it's not allowed to be switched on while he's here, that they still can't rule out interference with the equipment and yet, in the long run, it's not as though a little interference going to make any difference to how things are going to play out.

Still nothing.

If things were…different…Mycroft would say that this lack of response is of little surprise, would remind him again that he and Sherlock are little more than enemies and yet he knows beyond doubt how wrong that assumption is. Knows that Sherlock's supposed apathy is more defence mechanism than anything else so why is he ignoring him…ignoring this….?

Mind alive with a problem that he can actually solve he finds a nurse, has her promise as solemnly as he can mange that she shall call him if things should...progress …while he is gone and then makes his way out of the hospice.

It's odd but somehow he'd expected unbridled chaos...looting and fires in the street...for London to somehow of registered that it's close to loosing a part of its soul.

Maybe the city had been swept in as well, made blind by familiarity and the veneer of cool apathy just as...

No.

There's no way in hell he's admitting that now when it's so bloody useless...when doing as such would shred out what's left of his heart…

So, one step at a time, Patterson.

Step one: find Sherlock

Ok so find a Big Issue salesman. Pass over the usual 50 pound note and wait as they look you over.

Hm the smile and the gleam of recognition's coming faster as they pass the memory of his face about the network...

He's debating if that's a good thing or no when one of the vendor's collection of 'papers' is thrust in his direction.

A flyer for a cheap Soho nightclub has been wedged somewhere in the middle, obvious and out of place enough that he's swiftly diverting down through Baker street, onto Marylebone and on into the relative silence offered by Regents Park.

Tourists are everywhere as he walks out into the small block of buildings that form Soho Square and, as he walks the parameter, eyes searching always for the nightclub mentioned on the flyer he keeps a mental track of them in his periphery.

It's a paranoid trait drummed into him by the very expensive courses Mycroft had sent him on at the beginning of his employment and has him so very aware of every little movement going on around him that the remark of, "You are aware, of course, that you are somewhat conspicuous right now. Business men of the calibre necessary to afford the suit you are wearing very rarely visit this part of town during the daylight hours, after all," from a doorway all of an inch to his right, really shouldn't come as a surprise.

Still Sherlock's very, very, good at hiding in plain sight.

"Yes, well, I didn't really have the time to change," he remarks, before adding "I've sent you about six different messages this morning and tried calling you at least twice already today."

"Mm…I've had my phone off." It's distracted enough that he actually makes the effort to look at him, to check for all too familiar signs of substance abuse.

Sherlock waves off the scrutiny a minute later and, wordlessly, sinks back into the muggy darkness beyond the doorway. He follows without question, eyes fixed on the small vibrations that are coursing through the younger man's body.

Not high, his eyes had been too clear for that and yet there is some spark in him, a voracious energy he's not seen the other exhibit at any time outside of the influence of narcotics.

He settles eventually in a dingy little kitchen that's seen better days, makes them both a cup of tea, then states,

"I'm working on something." It's an answer to the question burning on his tongue, a question he knows he hasn't asked, it's a trick that both Holmes siblings are very fond of, a subtle disarmament technique that he's gotten far too familiar with over the last six months.

"Oh?" Of course there are more important things to talk of and yet, honestly, he needs the distraction right about now…is pretty damned happy with any excuse to keep his terrible news to himself that little bit longer.

Actually that's more than a little bit suspicious, this is Sherlock, after all, the man who can see a life history in the simple fold of a jacket…the man who should easily see that he's been in his clothes a good forty hours now and slept for two or three minutes in that entire expanse of time.

So he's deliberately supplying him a way out, the need to chase after just why he'd do something like that very swiftly overridden by the deeper need to simply pretend everything is ok.

Sherlock has clearly seen all of this, has kept silent until the very instant that he settles on his choice and responds,

"I've decided to offer my services up to the police as a consulting detective."

"There's no such thing as a consulting detective."

"Ah, but there is now,"

"Ha, fair enough I suppose and at least it'll give you a good solid reason to give up smoking. I can't see forensics being all too happy with you contaminating their crime scenes, especially if you've just stolen them away."

A look that say's he'd never be as stupid as to smoke within a controlled environment, then he responds,

"Indeed, though I remind you that this means you have to force Mycroft out of his snuff habit. A deal is a deal, after all."

Oh god...he's pulling apart at the seams, biting his lips to the point of drawing blood just to keep the tears restrained...stupid pride, of course, but there's no judgment in Sherlock's eyes, simply the usual mix of curiosity and fascination.

He can't place a shape about the truth even now...isn't strong enough to even attempt such a thing and so he breaths hard, finds again his centre and states,

"Check your messages, Sherlock."

A frown, then the younger man is pulling his mobile from his back pocket and fixing his attention onto its screen.

He sees the moment that Sherlock finds his first message, sees the confusion and the spike of anger before he's again cold, impassive.

"Paterson..." it's a half formed thing balanced somewhere in between sympathetic and apologetic, neither emotions that can help right now so he stops him before he can complete the sentiment.

"I want you to help me find who sent that box,"

"No." It's firm conviction and, looking so much more the lost young thing he'd met what seems a lifetime ago, Sherlock adds, "You are very angry right now under your grief and to give you the man behind this would be as soaking even more blood onto my hands."

Ah so this was all about validation after all...it's an empty thought, something to smother the recollection of just why Sherlock fears his anger, why he, in turn, fears it. Not that he's running from his past, because in a strange sort of way he's proud of the choices he has made, but he wants to think he's better than that now...wants to believe he's worth the sheer volume of faith Mycroft has placed in him since their first meeting.

So he nods, relaxes his posture as deliberately as he is able and says,

"I understand, Sherlock and you have to believe that I'd never such a thing of you."

A pause, long enough that he's certain he's been mistaken in thinking this friendship mutual and then Sherlock states,

"I want to, honestly I do, but I find the trust needed for such a belief all but drained from me."

With that he's gone…all smooth easy movement and dramatic flourish of coat...which leaves the half light and the scent of decay.

Eventually he also moves, works his way through the chatter and the laughter of the crowds, until he's back in the tomb like silence of the hospice.

The nurses smile at him as he works the rout to Mycroft's sizeable room and he mirrors the expression because he knows it's what's expected of him…because even now, even here, lying is easier than accepting the truth.

It is only once he is settled back into in the well padded chair that he's made his own, only once the pail, broken, shape of Mycroft is dominating again his immediate vision, that he let's that expression and all the pretext behind it shed away.

"I went to find Sherlock today...I know you asked me not to, but then they put you into this coma and started talking about you not getting out so..." a beat then "Ha, who am I kidding? Honestly I wanted some sort of answer...someone or something I could blame so I'd stop all the 'if only' thoughts clouding up my head. Sherlock's right though, I shouldn't be asking him to help me with something like that...I just wish this was the other way around because you'd know what to do somehow...would likely even find a way to fix it..." He had thought he would feel somehow lighter, that by confessing just a little he might somehow free himself and yet….

…yet all that he feels now is an unending hopelessness and the sense that, somehow his soul has tangled itself up in the sensors attached firmly to Mycroft's heart.

"You know a little about pottery, correct?"

He starts, presses the heel of his hand flush against his chest in the usual gesture of surprise, then turns with an exclamation of "Jesus, Sherlock, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"You are in very sound health and thus such a thing would only be possible if I were carrying some form of nerve toxin, which I am not." the barest of breaths then, "Irene informs me that you have an abnormally high knowledge of ceramics, that you actually wrote a few articles for a leading circulation dedicated to the subject when 'money was tight'. I wish to clarify if this is actually true or if she was simply talking you up as has seemed her want since you parted ways."

It is still a little too soon...to raw...to have his break up mentioned so very calmly and yet he knows Sherlock does not intend to hurt...that he is mentioning it simply to be thorough.

So he shakes his head and, when he can trust his voice not to sound sharp or angry, he responds,

"No, she was right, though that was a long time ago now."

"Mm but it still might prove enough." distracted, because he's texting and then a moment of still before his eyes light in a way he's come to associate with a drug high.

"In a few minutes a nurse will come in to say a man wishes a word. There is a coffee shop on the corner, take him there and talk to him about pottery for as long as you are able. Once you have exhausted the topic, or he seems to be loosing interest find an excuse to mention that you're here as Mycroft's aid...that he's become ill thanks to a visit of some form or another. The man shall then tell you that he is an old associate from before the two of you met, that he is actually a well qualified biochemical expert and ask after Mycroft's symptoms. You must give him this information, allow him to tell you that they sound familiar and then send him here alone. Make whatever excuse you feel works best, but make certain you do not come with him. Walk a block, find somewhere quiet and then ring me." With that Sherlock settles down into the chair opposite his own and folds up into a pose of clear, meditative, concentration.

Precisely ten minutes later Hannah, the petite blond thing with an entirely ungrateful boyfriend who has been a real angel the last few days, edges into the room,

"There's a man at reception asking after you, Paterson."

"Mm it's probably the office...I've gotten lapse with the status updates what with one thing and another." He states as he makes a show of gaining his feet, "oh and that's the younger brother I was telling you about...try not to let him break things while I'm gone, ok?"

The sound of her fragile little laughter is enough to boy him up, to make the warm, intrigued, greeting he gives the greasy little man waiting for him an easier lie than it should be in the circumstances.

"Mr. Guthrie, my name is Culverton Smith and it is an incomparable pleasure to meet you...though I must say I was somewhat surprised to learn that someone such as yourself would keep the company of someone like Richard Hampton."

An alias, one of the many on the little list he and the Holmes siblings have in their heads and it's but the work of moments to pull the agreed back-story from his head...to respond,

"Yes, well you know how those old Uni friendships are," a beat then, "so you know Hammy and he slipped you my name which must mean you've got 'Bristol Blue' as well."

"Ah ha, you caught me. I had thought I might pick your brain a little, but if it's inconvenient..."

"Oh no, no, I'm on lunch anyway."

So he takes him to the tacky little cafe, smiles and jokes about rare pottery as long as he is able to stomach then he turns to the matter of his own, personal, collection and very causally states,

"I had managed to edge my way into a place on Mycroft Holmes's books and get a nice, regular, pay check to fund the habit. Of course now it seems he's managed to catch some form of virulent, deadly, disease and it looks as though I'll have to sell the lot or risk starving."

"Well well, would you believe that knew Mycroft in boyhood? Nice chap, good head on his shoulders...might I ask after his symptoms?" A level look of suspicion and smith is stating, "I work at the MOH and have an intimate knowledge of some of the rarer things as well as how to ease their symptoms if not cure them."

He gives the symptoms, watches the flash of dark satisfaction before Smith is making an offer to accompany him back to the hospice so that he might 'do what I can'.

He makes his excuses, playing the role of apathetic, put upon, assistant so very well that he knows not even a drop of suspicion enters Smith's head, then he rounds the nearest alley before calling Sherlock as promised.

"I want you to run here, Paterson, as fast as you are able. Do not come to the front of the building though but rather to the quaint little doorway recessed in on the edge of the building closest to Circus Road...I would then recommend running as fast as you can up the corridor you find beyond, Mr. Smith will only take another minute to make his mind up about coming, after all and I wouldn't wish you to miss the show."

He knows what he's implying instantly and is running even before Sherlock has quite gotten to the end of the instructions, is slinking between nattering old ladies and vaulting over the heads of small children as though it's six months previous and he's just scored a hot lead.

Mycroft had made him train, had pushed him to the very edged then pushed harder because he'd known he'd had a little more to give, still even then...even as a man who has always run that little faster, that little further, he does not manage to quite beet Smith.

It's a close call, for as he soars out of the corridor Sherlock had mentioned, takes in the fuzzy familiarity of his surroundings (the room that Hannah had set up for him when it'd become clear he wasn't going home, right next to Mycroft's and apparently gifted of Walls so thin a sneeze might break them, yet still not enough for him to actually make any use out of it) he can hear the end of what sounds an introduction.

Sherlock is pressed close to the wall, thin rigid back turned to him and yet the instant he's noted his presence he's gesturing firstly for silence and then for him to settle at his side.

"That ass of an assistant told me you were sick, thinks you got it off a dignitary if his manner's anything to go by, though we both know that's not quite the case, don't we?"

He's filtering the anger the moment it blooms, focusing on wondering just why Smith would be talking in this manner to someone he knows is in a medical coma and then he's hearing an impossible thing…is hearing Mycroft responding low and so very quite he can't make out the words even through this wall.

"Ha, I knew they'd not have sedated you without knowing quite what they were dealing with, probably told the boy that to stop him stressing himself any more than he is already," a beat then, "I'll let you into a little secret, shall I?"

Another muffled response and then Smith is stating,

"You were sent a little gift three days ago, a beautiful rose wood box filled with snuff. The note said that it was from a man you admired and, indeed, you had seen it in his collection many a time, admired it even, so of course you believed that note. What you could not know was that he owed me a debt, that when you decided to wedge your nose into things that were not your business I asked for that box as payment for that dept and set up a nice little trap."

Sherlock has to physically restrain him this time, which is good because after Smith rattles off the details of that trap, apparently gloating over the fact that he's managed to get one over a supposed genius, Mycroft enquires,

"Did you get all of that, officer?"

For a moment he can register only that he sounds impossibly like himself again, sounds strong and certain, if not just a little fatigued. Then the sound of some unknown police officer reading Smith his rights, the other's angry, angry demand for answers and Mycroft's oh so cool response of,

"Of course I knew from the start that you were behind your Cousin's death, that there would be no way to prove this fact other than to gain a confession from your own lips and yet how could such a thing be achieved? You are a vain man, that much is clear in your every action and so why not make you believe that you have achieved a supposedly impossible victory? Why not then allow you the chance to gloat over that victory to the one man who you knew certain would be unable to repeat the words?"

"You won't make it stick; this is bloody entrapment after all."

"Perhaps and yet you were so very kind to give Sir Lester a receipt for your purchase of his snuff box, a snuff box rigged with a very nasty little spring and a strain of virus that I believe only you have access too."

A string of curses which grow ever the fainter as Smith is supposedly pulled, bodily, from the room and then,

"You are more than welcome to join me and perhaps one of you would be so good as to bring round one of the many bottles of water Hannah has so thoughtfully left behind."

He snatches up a bottle the instant the request has been made, follows the instruction without question as though this is an entirely normal situation…as though he hasn't just had his trust betrayed in the most terrible of ways imaginable.

The second he processes that he's done this, registers the weight and shape of the bottle in his hand, shear unadulterated anger takes over his entire mental process.

When, at last, rationality comes back he finds himself on the street, throat raw for shouting, a tingle in his left hand that suggests he's struck out at something…someone…and the anger hot still in his belly.

It's the first he's had an episode like this since he'd cut himself off from his family…since he'd realisedhis anger was slowly turning him into a man his father would be proud of…and he's literally trembling as the endorphins leak their way back out his body.

He can't think straight…can barely think at all outside of 'breath, Paterson, breath or you're gonna give yourself a panic attack, which would be icing on the cake round about now,'…then his mobile goes off in his pocket.

A text from Sherlock that reads, **'you are being irrational and somewhat more idiotic than I believed, Paterson,' **which stokes fuel to the fire of his anger a moment before his rationality at last claims back control.

Sherlock is not the sort to lie in this form of situation, or, indeed, in any situation where the only true value of the fabrication is to patch over hurt feeling. This can only mean that there truly is something to this entire affair that he has missed, something so obvious…so blindingly simple…that it's simply slipped its way past.

Oh.

Oh that bloody idiot.

He's all but running back on his tracks then, mouth pulling out into a smile he knows is likely to look slightly insane right now, but really he couldn't care less.

Mycroft is talking to Hannah as he rounds the corner, her face is a picture of concern while his…his is reddening already about the base of one eye and though he's smiling it's not quite meeting his eye.

The nurse spots him first, concern lightening instantly and a bright smile catching at her lips as she draws Mycroft's attention to him.

He actually looks surprised for a brief moment, then he's mumbling something to Hannah and they're left alone in the vaulted heights of the entrance hall.

"That man was after Sherlock, likely because he'd made the same connections you had and was searching for a way to get the evidence needed to convict him. You could see where that would lead…could see Sherlock taking things that little bit too far and infecting himself for the sake of accuracy…and so you moved first." He waits for the small nod of conformation and then, taking a step forward, he adds, "It's why you had to keep me out, because if I'd known what you were actually up to I'd have had part in it and then you'd have to have told Sherlock yourself, which would have killed the whole thing dead in the water."

One more truth, the one that's brought him back here even though he's angry still, even though he knows that a more intelligent man would likely have simply ignored Sherlock's message and kept walking,

"You also kept me out to provoke a reaction….kept me out so that you could ultimately hurt me to the point that I would not want to come back and thus make me safe always."

"Paterson…"

"No, no. I don't want you lying any more, or trying to cover this all over with some line or another." He remarks as he strides the last few steps between them and takes a gentle hold of Mycroft's wrist, "I want you to accept that there is no where I'd rather be anymore than here at your side…that I couldn't care less what that means for my safety…that I love you no matter how bloody insane that is."

At which point he kisses him because, really, what else is there to do after a confession like that?

O

T: Why yes this did somewhat run away with me! The 'MILVERTON' nod is, of course, the pottery themed segway which was a perfect way to get Paterson away from the Hospice while Sherlock likely shouted a little at Mycroft for poking his nose in where it wasn't really wanted.

I've put my own hospice in the place of the quite pretty looking St John's near Regent's Park in London, a little because it was the first private hospice that appeared in my Google search and a little because of how amusingly close it was to Baker St!

Oh and I'm already working on a semi sequel to this that's based within the timeline of 'STUDY'…yes I am having a great deal of fun already!


End file.
